Lazio call to protect young Italian players like Federico Macheda

Lazio president Claudio Lotito has called for stringent new regulations to
enable Italian clubs to repel the predatory advances of their Premier League
rivals after admitting that his club were powerless to prevent Manchester
United luring teenage forward Federico Macheda to Old Trafford in 2007.

Great future: Federico Macheda in training with Wayne Rooney, and Paul ScholesPhoto: AP

Macheda, who marked his senior United debut with a spectacular injury-time winner to seal a 3-2 victory against Aston Villa on Sunday, was plucked from Lazio's youth-team as a 15-year-old with United exploiting rules that prevent Italian clubs from offering professional contracts to players under the age of 16.

The Premier League champions were forced to pay £200,000 in compensation to Lazio, with a similar fee going to AS Roma last July for the 16-year-old forward Davide Petrucci. United also took advantage of the restrictive Italian system by tempting 17-year-old Giuseppe Rossi from Parma in 2004.

Having seen United take away their prize asset, however, Lazio president Lotito fears that Italian clubs will remain vulnerable to raids from the Premier League unless regulations are changed to ring-fence their rising stars.

Lotito said: "I talked repeatedly with Macheda's parents, we established a dialogue, but it was not possible to do anything. We could not compete with United's offer. Normally these boys are not from wealthy families and they look for alternatives in foreign countries for economic reasons.

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"That is not right. We have to be provided with more reliable and concrete rules than those which govern Italian clubs. We knew that he was a great player and we did everything to keep him, but we can not allow ourselves to behave in a way which I feel is immoral."

Volfango Patarca, the Lazio scout who unearthed Macheda, believes that United have a player who can emulate Cristiano Ronaldo. Patarca said: "Federico definitely resembles Ronaldo. I first saw him play when he was just 11 years old, but he already had goalscoring in his blood.

"He was the real jewel of Lazio's youth team. In my opinion, Federico will end up becoming one of the finest strikers in Europe."

Macheda's progress in Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's reserve team this season prompted Sir Alex Ferguson to elevate the 17-year-old to United's Champions League squad in January and the youngster will be on the bench against FC Porto on Tuesday.

Solskjaer has described Macheda as a 'big talent' and Ferguson's ploy of dangling the carrot of a first-team call-up ahead of last Monday's second-string fixture against Newcastle resulted in the Italian scoring a hat-trick.

Macheda and his family, father Pasquale, mother Loridanna and his younger brother, Simone, are settled in the Manchester suburb of Sale, having decamped from Rome last summer. They may soon be moving up in the world.